As UFC heavyweight title changes hands again, the search for stability continues

If Cain Velasquez and Junior Dos Santos never meet again inside the cage, we might remember their pair of UFC heavyweight title fights as a tale of two right hands. The first, landed by Dos Santos in the first minute of the first round in November 2011, was a fight-ender. The second, courtesy of Velasquez’s first-round efforts at UFC 155, was merely a fight-changer.

Years from now the official record will still tell us that on Dec. 29, 2012, Velasquez recaptured the UFC heavyweight championship via unanimous decision after five rounds. That almost makes it sound competitive, which it wasn’t. Instead it was more like a car crash on a sheet of solid ice. It was a crucial mistake, followed by a slow slide toward an inescapable end. Yank on the wheel and pump the brake all you want, just don’t expect it to change anything.

For Dos Santos, the first mistake might have been a failure to acknowledge Velasquez’s punching power. The Brazilian seemed so concerned with avoiding the takedown and catching the challenger with strikes on the way in that he left his face wide open throughout the opening frame. It only took a few minutes for Velasquez to find it with one blistering right. After that the fight was pretty much over.

Or at least, it could have been. The way Dos Santos was reeling each time he tried to rise to his feet, no responsible bartender would have consented to serve him a drink. Still, some zombified version of the champion kept getting off his stool. Just when you thought (hoped?) he’d been taken down for the last time, he worked his way up on legs that were about as sturdy as a newborn colt’s. He wouldn’t make it easy on himself, on us. We wanted a champ who wouldn’t give up? We got it. I wonder if we enjoyed it in practice as much as we thought we would in theory.

For Velasquez, the fight was a 25-minute redemption tale, almost as if he were drawing it out on purpose to savor the moment. If Dos Santos’ title triumph was a blitzkrieg, Velasquez’s was a steady carpet bombing campaign. He took the best of his opponent with that one right hand in the first, then chipped away at whatever was left over the course of the next four rounds. He might have been doing us all a favor if he’d gone in search of a submission when he had Dos Santos dazed. Instead he was content to rinse and repeat with takedowns and ground control. In this way, he became the UFC heavyweight champion for a second time. So much for Dos Santos being the savior to finally establish some stability at the top of MMA’s most unpredictable division.

Just as he was poised to break the UFC record for consecutive heavyweight title defenses (still holding firm at a whopping two) Dos Santos is done. Time to change the locks and crown another new king, the new “baddest man on the planet.” After his losing effort, Dos Santos might still have a claim to the title of toughest thing on two legs, but Velasquez gets to call himself the best. For now, anyway.

You can already see how this will go. Velasquez will await the winner of Alistair Overeem and Antonio “Bigfoot” Silva, while Dos Santos will pause only long enough to let the swelling go down before he starts agitating for a rubber match. Somewhere in here the UFC will have to figure out what to do about Daniel Cormier and Josh Barnett coming over from Strikeforce, but that’s another headache altogether.

If Velasquez can successfully defend the title even once we’ll get to start all over again, wondering whether we’ve finally found a heavyweight champ who can stick around, whether that really matters, whether this game of musical champions is an indicator of the division’s depth or just its nature.

The appeal of the heavyweight division has always been the allure of sheer power. As Dos Santos explained before this fight, when a heavyweight lands a punch it doesn’t matter where in the arena you’re sitting — you know about it right away. He ended up being more right than he knew.

When Velasquez landed his big right hand midway through the first, even the beer vendors at the MGM Grand must have heard it. Whether they also heard the beginning of a new heavyweight reign or just a temporary stop on the conveyor belt of champions, we can only guess.

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